virtualization.info

BrianMadden.com recently published an extensive review of the VDI platform based on KVM that Virtual Bridges offers since December 2009: VERDE 3.0.

Some key points of the review:

• Almost 100% command line oriented (version 4.0, expected for April, will introduce a server management GUI).
• Supported protocols are RDP and Virtual Bridges implementation of RFB (used by VNC).
  VERDE’s RFB is pretty fast, Virtual Bridges claims it is superior to RDP 5.
  The open source version of Red Hat SPICE protocol is unusable, will be adopted in future if possible.
• Active Directory integration is supported through 3rd parties products like Likewise, but there’s no Single Sign On (SSO).
• VERDE Cluster setup is complex, as you have to configure 5 tiers (Satellite Servers, a Master Server, Workstations, authentication servers and storage).
  RDP only partially supported (this will change in version 4.0).
• A proprietary protocol, SMART, is used to synchronize the virtual desktop image between the server and the workstations in offline VDI scenario.
  SMART supports branch office scenarios, with virtual desktop replication across WAN.
• It uses a PDF-based universal printing solution for client-side printing.
• User data is separated from the the OS using a secondary drive letter

Comments are worth a read too as they contain details about pricing. Highly recommended.

Labels: KVM, Reviews, VDI, Virtual Bridges

Last week Pano Logic announced its third round funding, equal to $20M and led by Mayfield Fund.

As result, Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha will join the company’s Board of Directors.

With this investment, the startup raised more than $40M. The previous round, $18M, was led by Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs.

Pano Logic revealed that its sales tripled in 2009 and while its revenue may just get better this year, the startup is seeing increasing pressure from bigger firms that embrace the idea of a zero client for thin computing and VDI environments.
Dell, for example, just announced its own zero client: the FX100.

The good news is that Pano Logic just closed an OEM agreement with Fujitsu.
Simply dubbed Fujitsu Zero Client, the OEM’ed product is available starting this month in every country where Fujitsu operates, as far as we understand.

Labels: Funding, Pano Logic, VDI

Exactly one year ago two well-known virtualization experts Ruben Spruijt (Solution Architect and CTO at PQR) and Jeroen van de Kamp (Enterprise Architect and CTO at Login Consultants) released an independent, non-sponsored performance analysis comparing ESX 3.5, XenServer 5.0 and Hyper-V 2008.

The benchmark, specifically designed to measure desktop virtualization workloads (served by Terminal Services and VDI platforms), was so valid that Citrix decided to embrace the Virtual Reality Check methodology to measure XenDesktop 4 performance.

Twelve months later the two are back with a new comparison. This time they put side by side Citrix XenServer 5.5, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1, comparing them against their new workload simulator Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) 2.0.

The most interesting thing is that all tests were performed on HP hardware equipped with the new Intel Xeon 5500 Series CPUs (codename Nehalem), and compared to Virtual Reality Check 1.0 results obtained on previous generation processors.
Performance are almost doubled with both XenServer and vSphere, and with Hyper-V R2, performance are up 154%.

Once again, if you are involved in a desktop virtualization project this performance analysis is a mandatory reading.

Labels: Benchmarks, Citrix, Microsoft, Papers, VDI, VMware

Just one week after the release of Stratosphere 4.5.3, the US startup Liquidware Labs announces version 4.5.4.

In this build the company included an Application Virtualization Assessment feature clarifying that its interest goes beyond hardware virtualization and VDI.

With the new capability, Stratusphere 4.5.4 can build an application inventory by assessing physical desktops and laptops.
The inventory includes the following information:

• Executable size
• System services installed and used per application
• Device drivers installed per application
• Total number of application users
• Average launch delay (application load time)
• Application usage (total and average time)
• Application resource requirements (total and average CPU, memory, IO)

Basically Liquidware Labs is betting on the advent of application virtualization as a mainstream technology, something that doesn’t seem to happen anytime soon.
It’s not the only one. A few weeks ago another startup, Lanamark, silently introduced a similar feature which completely passed under the radars.

Labels: LiquidWare Labs, Releases, VDI

Leostream announces today a new minor version for its Connection Broker that arrives over five months after the 6.2 release.

In this update the company introduces a number of new features:

• support for the open source version of Xen (the one released by Xen.org)
• support for Sun Secure Global Desktop Software
• support for Ericom Blaze (which comes from the technology partnership signed in November 2009)
• a web client to access virtual desktops over HTTP/S connections
• control over the remote desktop protocol used by remote clients when multiple protocols are available
• a more granular set of roles and permissions that separate end users and administrators rights

While every feature above is welcome, the most interesting one is the support for Sun SDG.
The Oracle acquisition of Sun, and its declared intention to continue investing in the existing virtualization portfolio, is translating into new opportunities for those vendors that are struggling to compete with VMware in its own domain. And competing against VMware View can be pretty hard these days.

Labels: Leostream, Releases, VDI

A couple of weeks ago Citrix published a new architecture blueprint for its VDI platform XenDesktop.

The 38-pages document provides guidance to design scalable virtual desktop infrastructures based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005, Citrix Provisioning Server 5.1 and of course XenDesktop 4.0 (which includes the hypervisor and XenApp 5).

In this paper Citrix doesn’t push for the adoption of XenServer 5.5 but highlights that XenDesktop is hypervisor agnostic and can work with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V as well.
The company doesn’t even detail if and how different hypervisors will impact the scalability of this architecture but it offers some reference metrics in case you plan to use XenServer.

Labels: Citrix, Papers, VDI

At the end of January VMware revealed that is working to increase its virtual machines density up to 16 VMs per core, mostly for VDI environments. That is twice the average amount of VMs that customers seems able to accommodate today, and VMware suggested that this record depends on new Intel Xeon 5500 (codename Nehalem) CPUs.

Anyway, that number came out during an interview, with no additional details, so there’s a lot of analysis to do before getting excited.
Nonetheless, the claim generated much interest (and skepticism), at the point that Citrix decided to answer.

The company says that it can cram into a single physical server up to 125 virtual desktops (and 500 hosted shared desktops and 5,000 local streamed desktops) with XenDesktop 4.0 and the Xeon 5500 CPUs.

Now, even if we know that Nehalem CPUs have four cores each, Citrix is not saying how many CPUs are powering this single server. We assume it’s a two socket system, which would mean 16 VMs per core.
The difference is that VMware seems to expect such density in future versions of View, while Citrix is claiming that it can deliver it today.

Can the two companies qualify these statements please?

Update: Citrix promptly answers with details: 130 Windows XP desktops on a 72GB, dual socket, quad-core Intel Xeon x5570 (codename Nehalem) host, running XenServer 5.5 and XenDesktop 4.0.

Citrix measured the density using the independent benchmark framework called Project Virtual Reality Check, which already raised a lot of attention exactly one year ago, when it was used to compare performance of VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V for Terminal Services and VDI workloads.

Labels: Citrix, VDI

Last week the startup Liquidware Labs updated its flagship product Stratosphere to version 4.5.3.

This minor update (version 4.5 came out in October 2009) just introduces a much welcome one-click assessment that produces a useful PowerPoint slidedeck.

To be honest the slides could be prettier but they are customizable, so users may want to apply their own themes before presenting to a wide audience.
The information inside the slide deck anyway is valuable, especially a graph showing how many physical machines and how many users are good candidates for client consolidation (aka VDI).

Labels: LiquidWare Labs, Releases, VDI

An area where Microsoft doesn’t seem particularly active is the so-called virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
So far the company made just a few progresses, letting its partner Citrix dominate the scene and compete head to head with VMware.

Rather than on products, Microsoft is focusing on VDI licensing.
In July 2009 it introduced two new VDI licenses, the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite and the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premium Suite, on top of its well-known Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD).
Now the company may perform additional adjustments to its offering.

A couple of days ago TechTarget reported that Microsoft plans to modify the VECD to reduce the cost per user ($23/seat/year if you are a Software Assurance customer, $110/seat/year if you are not).

Microsoft doesn’t plan to abandon its per-seat model but will introduces changes to extend use rights, allowing device roaming.

Labels: Microsoft, VDI

While addressing the nth skeptic article about the destiny of XenServer, the Citrix CTO of Virtualization and Management division Simon Crosby provided some details about the company’s performance in 2009 and its plans for 2010.

Specifically, Citrix added over 35,000 new customers this year (it’s not clear how many of them bought XenDesktop and how many just XenServer) and plans to serve over 100,000 virtual desktops for next year.

With these numbers Crosby clarifies once again that Citrix has no interest in dropping XenServer to adopt Hyper-V and limit itself to deliver XenDesktop and Essentials for the Microsoft hypervisor.

Chris Wolf too, Senior Analyst at Burton Group, answered the article above, and his tweet seems to suggest that the upcoming version of XenServer will highlight the commitment on the product:

RT @aebarrett: VMW will cut prices, CTX will give up on XenServer http://bit.ly/75vDxc <- 1 for 2 ain't bad. even Nostradamus wasn't perfect
8:50 AM Dec 22nd from TweetDeck

RT @mreferre: RT @aebarrett: Citrix give up on XenServer: <- I thought they did already <-next release will change your mind
8:53 AM Dec 22nd from TweetDeck

Labels: Citrix, VDI

While Paul and Peter Ghostine are now busy working on a stealth-mode cloud computing startup, their former employer Quest releases vWorkspaces 7.0 just before the end of the year.

The new release introduces a number of interesting features, including:

• Inclusion of Flash redirection (for 32bit Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8) in the Experience Optimized Protocol (EOP) [demo]
• Bandwidth and compression control for USB devices (Virtual USB Hub)
• Integration with VMware Linked Clones [demo]
• Customization of Sysprep procedure
• Support for reprovisiong VMware virtual machines at logoff
• Support for 32/64bit Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 [demo]

vWorkspaces 7.0 also includes the experimental capability to redirect Internet Explorer to the client.

Labels: Provision Networks, Quest, Releases, VDI

Herco van Brug, Senior Consultant at PQR, last week released an interesting paper about the storage implications in VDI environments.

The 14-pages paper, titled VDI & Storage: Deep Impact, covers an area of virtual desktop infrastructures that is not investigated enough most time:

…when implementing a VDI infrastructure certain points need to be addressed. First of all, the TCO/ROI calculation may not be as rosy as some people suggest. Secondly, the performance impact on applications, specifically multimedia and 3D applications, needs to be investigated. And finally, don’t forget to check licensing aspects, as this can be a very significant factor in VDI infrastructure.
While centralized desktop computing provides important advantages, all resources come together in the data centre. That means that the CPU resources, memory resources, networking and disk resources all need to be facilitated from a single point - the virtual infrastructure.
The advantage of a central infrastructure is that, when sized properly, it is more flexible in terms of resource consumption than decentralized computing. It is also more capable of handling a certain amount of peak loads, as these only occur once in a while on a small number of systems in an average data centre.
But what if the peak loads are sustained and the averages are so high that the cost of facilitating them is disproportionate to that of decentralized computing?
As it turns out, there is a hidden danger to VDI. There’s a killer named “IOPS”…

Labels: VDI

RSA, the EMC security division acquired in June 2006, just published a recommended reading for any VMware customer interested in VDI: A Guide for Deploying and Administering the RSA Solution for VMware View.

This is a massive 110-pages paper that describes the architecture and step-by-step implementation of a VMware View 4.0 environment secured by RSA products and managed by the EMC Ionix Server Configuration Manager.

Interestingly, RSA recommends Windows Server 2003 for the entire stack.
From a security standpoint it makes sense to not suggest the latest version of the Microsoft operating system (Windows Server 2008 R2), but RSA seems to have no problems in suggesting to deploy View 4.0, which is pretty new too, and which introduces a brand new remote desktop protocol, the software-only version of Teradici PCoIP, which probably didn’t pass much security scrutiny so far.

Maybe the reason to recommend Window Server 2003 rather than 2008 is another one and somebody from RSA will reach out to clarify this point.

Thanks to Virtual Geek for the news.

Labels: Papers, RSA, Security, VDI, VMware

Red Hat embraced hardware virtualization a long time ago by adopting Xen as part of its Enterprise Linux operating system.
Despite that the company never penetrated the market enough to become a serious competitor for VMware, Microsoft and Citrix.
In the attempt to increase its chances to become a key player in the virtualization space, Red Hat is making some courageous choices.

First, it replaced Xen with KVM, becoming the first major vendor to sell and support this relatively new platform inside enterprise (IBM supports KVM too, but just for VDI and just for a very specific software stack).

Now, right before launching its VDI offering, Red Hat has open sourced the SPICE remote desktop protocol, acquired from Qumranet in September 2008. And this is a major step, one of the few that could make a difference.

All the other major virtualization players released or are about to release high performance remote desktop protocols that are optimized for VDI: Citrix has the ICA/HDX, VMware and Teradici just released the software-only version of PCoIP, and Microsoft is expected to integrate the technologies acquired from Calista in its RDP.
On top of these three, there’s a crowd that is pushing for its own proprietary protocol (like VDIworks and Pano Logic) or for its own RDP optimizations (like Quest and Ericom).

In this mess of non-compatible, brand new protocols, an open source alternative is certainly interesting.

The availability of SPICE as open source has many potential ramifications.
First of all, it may immediately attract IBM, which is using the Citrix HDX protocol today for its brand new desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offering. 
Secondarily, it may be integrated in Xen, which would increase the chances to have major contributors like Oracle.
More than that, it may slip in most thin clients, because vendors are free to extend it and integrate in their devices without having to deal with anybody.
Last but not least, it may receive the support of many cloud providers that, over time, will have to deal with heterogeneous virtualization platforms in their IaaS clouds.

The most important thing, anyway, is that the open sourced SPICE protocol could become part of the Linux kernel. Qumranet already succeeded in a similar challenge with KVM, after just six months of development.
If the Linux kernel will integrate SPICE, every distribution will feature it out-of-the-box in a few months. And this means that every Linux guest OS will be VDI-ready without doing anything.

Of course the success of SPICE will depend much on its performance. Brian Madden published a valuable insight on this very point covering the architecture and features of the protocol.

The open source version of SPICE is available here.

Labels: KVM, Qumranet, Red Hat, VDI

A couple of months after releasing the whitepaper Designing an Enterprise XenDesktop Solution (for 10,000 VDI seats), which was focused on version 3.0, Citrix is back with another interesting document, this time on version XenDesktop 4.0.

This one, titled High Availability for Desktop Virtualization - Reference Architecture, is an architectural blueprint to build an end-to-end environment that is fault tolerant at several levels: at the virtual desktop hosting platform (aka the hypervisor) one, at the guest operating system delivery one and at the application/user environment delivery one.

The architecture involves the use of technologies like NetScaler, XenDesktop Roaming Users and XenServer Pools and XenMotion.

Citrix also released a companion paper titled High Availability for Desktop Virtualization - Implementation Guide, which is a step-by-step walkthrough of the configuration described in the previous paper.

Labels: Citrix, Papers, VDI

Exactly one year ago IBM and Virtual Bridges announced a partnership to resell an end-to-end desktop virtualization solution based on KVM.
That solution includes VERDE, a subset of the Virtual Bridges VDI connection broker (Win4VDI) that only supports Linux guest OSes.

Eight months later, Virtual Bridges completely replaced Win4VDI with VERDE 2.0, introduced support for Windows guest OSes, and added a lightweight Linux distribution which features KVM which customers can install on clients.

Today the company releases version 3.0, which introduces several new features like:

• Capability to replicate a virtual desktop gold image across WAN links
• Integration of VoIP capabilities (Skype) into the client-side KVM platform
• Support for Microsoft Windows 7 virtual desktops
• Support for Apple Mac hardware

Labels: IBM, Releases, VDI, Virtual Bridges

Last week Leostream and Ericom announced a partnership to support the new Ericom accelerator for Microsoft RDP launched in September, Blaze, inside the Leostream Connection Broker.

It is an uncommon move considering that the two vendors compete in the VDI space with a multi-hypervisor connection broker.
Anyway both have to face the competition coming from the platform providers Citrix and VMware, plus the one coming from third parties like Quest/Provision Networks.

Assuming the market will receipt well this combined offering, this effort may lead to further collaboration and even a merge, to stay competitive in the VDI market which is considered by many as ready to explode next year.

Labels: Alliances, Ericom, Leostream, VDI

Last week VMware finally released the much awaited View 4.0, which supports vSphere 4.0 and introduces the software-only version of the Teradici remote desktop protocol PCoIP.

VMware is offering two versions of View 4: Enterprise (which includes vSphere and View Manager 4.0), priced at $150 per concurrent user, and Premier (which also includes View Composer and ThinApp), priced at $250 per concurrent user.

Of course the key aspect of this release is how well PCoIP performs on LAN and WAN scenarios.
Unfortunately the product will be available for download on November 19, so for now it’s impossible to make a performance analysis and comparison with Microsoft RDP 7, Citrix ICA/HDX and the other tens of  alternatives that are flooding the VDI market.

The major problem with PCoIP is if its performance is so great to justify the adoption of a new proprietary remote desktop protocol at its 1.0 release (the protocol is more mature than that but so far relied on hardware components).
Many customers may want to be careful here, mostly considering that VMware and Teradici just have a co-development agreement, which is not even exclusive.
What happens if Teradici is acquired by a VMware competitor or if the company suffers major issues?
And most of all, what happens if one year from now VMware consider this protocol unpractical and too expensive to optimize and decides to replace it, for instance, with the just ratified Net2Display standard? 

Anyway a lot has been already said.

Brian Madden already published a brief FAQ list, which includes a couple of interesting details:

• The PCoIP client only supports Windows at the moment. Linux and Mac OS versions are expected next year
• View 4.0 will fully support Microsoft Windows 7 as guest OS in early 2010

Chad Sakac already published a blueprint to design a View 4.0 architecture with the recently announced VMware/Cisco/EMC hardware called VBlock.
The solution (a VBlock 1) fits over 2,048 virtual desktops and costs $750 per seat all inclusive:

The paper includes some performance analysis. It doesn’t clarify if the numbers are obtained when using the RDP or the PCoIP protocol (assuming this will make any difference) but it’s really worth a check.

Update: With some delay VMware finally released the bits of View 4.0 (build 210939).
To install it you first need to update vSphere 4.0 with Update 1 (build 208156), released Nov. 19, 2009.

Labels: Releases, VDI, VMware

In June the new startup Liquidware Labs released the first rebranded version of the VMsight technology acquired in May: Stratusphere 4.2.
They are back this week with the first consistent update and easy to guess the new 4.5 version integrates the technology acquired from Entrigue Systems in September: ProfileUnity.

In details Stratusphere 4.5 introduces support for Citrix XenDesktop 4 and Microsoft Window 7, as well as the preliminary support for VMware View 4 (which still is in private beta).
On top of that the product sports several enhancements in the GUI, in the reports and in the correlation engine.

Anyway the most interesting thing of this release is that now Liquidware Labs allows users to download a trial version of the product.
The company always said that it’s specifically targeting Professional Services Organizations (PSOs), and most of the time this means that you don’t need to have (and promote) a freely downloadable trial.
If Liquidware Labs has just changed this it may mean that it’s also changing its marketing strategy.

Labels: LiquidWare Labs, Releases, VDI

A couple of weeks ago Citrix announced the newest version of its XenDesktop. While the product is about to deliver interesting features, many customers complained about the new licensing scheme because Citrix moved a concurrent user model to a named user model.

The product is not out yet (the release is planned for November 16) but Citrix, listening to the feedbacks, already changed its pricing strategy.

With an informal announcement on his corporate blog, Sumit Dhawan, Vice President of Product Marketing, describes the new rules:

1. Customers can choose between the “per named user” model and the “per device” model for XenDesktop Enterprise ($225) and Platinum Editions ($350).
   Same license for both uses. Same price.
2. The Standard Edition license is replaced by a brand new VDI Edition which has a “per named user” and “per device” license model ($95) as well as the dear old “per concurrent user” license model ($195).

The new VDI edition doesn’t include XenApp but still supports 3rd party hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware VI/vSphere.

Labels: Citrix, VDI

Just in case you don’t fill overwhelmed by dozen of proprietary remote desktop protocols and RDP enhancements, here’s a new one: Ericom Blaze.

The company launched it last month, claiming impressive performance:

• RDP compression up to 98%
• graphics-rich content 10-25 times faster than RDP
• RDP bandwidth consumption by up to 25 times

Clearly Blaze is not a new protocol but rather an RDP enhancement that can compete against the Quest/Provision Networks Experience Optimization Pack (EOP).

Blaze works with Windows XP, Vista and 7 virtual desktops. Support for Linux and Mac OS X VMs should arrive within the end of this month. Anyway its use is not limited to VDI scenarios.
Interestingly, Ericom clarifies that it requires a CPU with support for the MMX instruction set.

Right now Blaze supports the Ericom PowerTerm connection brokers and VMware View (Linux client only, Windows client support is expected later during this Q4).

Labels: Ericom, VDI

By now every virtualization.info reader knows that VMware and Citrix are completely focused on competing in the VDI space rather than on “simple” server consolidation.
For now most of the discussion is mostly around their connection brokers (and their remote desktop protocols), but in a matter of months it will be extended to their application virtualizations solutions and their upcoming client hypervisors.

Now, a question: What is one of the most viewed threads on the VMware VMTN forums dedicated to the connection broker View?

Answer: A thread titled “What made you chose VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop”, which was started at the end of April and so far collected almost 3,000 views.

The thread is full of interesting comments. Of course it’s impossible to say if all of them come from real customers. For sure many come from well-known VMware users.
Also, not every comment, even the genuine ones, reports correct information. Nonetheless the sum of them contributes to clarify the customers sentiment about both products, and most of all about VDI as a technology.

Some of the things they said so far are well worth a mention here and should be considered along with the architectural reference blueprints that both VMware and Citrix released so far (our emphasis):

…I have found View very easy to install, configure and manage, from bare metal to delivery of 4 nodes less than a day. you have two consoles, vCenter and View Administrator.

Now compare this to XD the same 4 node deployment was over a week of shoehorning etc, bear in mind this is on Tier one hardware. Also to get similar functionality you will be presented with I think 6 different management consoles. you also have the added benefit of Offline Desktops (albeit experimental) with view that is not available with XD.

True ICA is a better remote protocol that RDP, but form my opinion the pain points are too great for the product…

…Finally as for price, again, I can only tell you what we've gotten back and XD has come in more expensive than View and that includes purchasing Splitview as well.

…There is a learning curve for most who enter the Citrix world. There is a bit more complexity in the configuration as some has stated, but we are reaping the benefits…

…Basically the biggest reason is that most companies are a VMware shop. So it makes sense to only have to call one vendor for end to end support.

Also cost. View costs less per desktop compared to XenDesktop i.e licensing, more VM's per physical host, linked clones for storage savings etc. TCO is very important because desktop costs are already very low.

Stability. View has less components and VMware historically does great QA on the products that they release. Microsoft and Citrix, not so well.

Big reason, VMware views linked clone technology. SAN storage is not cheap, PC hard drives are. You need to be able to sell this to senior management. When you tell them the hard drive storage is going to be 4 times as much they will laugh at you…

…To be honest, we chose VMware for the cost. Presently we are having a few issues that have made us reconsider our choice.

One issue you need to closely look at is in regards to using remote virtual desktops, if that is your intended use, and the interaction with the OS of the clients who will be connecting in. Page 18 of the View Manager Administration guide is a must see if you want to use remote clients through the view portal. Information I wish I had during our evaluation…

…One of my vendors was giving me a lot of pressure to validate XD for my environment. I am PoCing View 3.1 right now. I'm not looking at XD for the following reasons:

1) I'm a VMware shop 1 throat to strangle.

2) Just because XD works with ESX backends now doesn't mean they will in the future…

…To be honest, the only advantage that Citrix has right now is their ICA display protocol. This is the only reason that Citrix is even being evaluated at most companies…

(please note anyway that all the comments above refer to View 3.x and XenDesktop 3.x and not the upcoming XenDesktop 4)

Citrix felt the need to address some of the points emphasized above, and published an article that covers the installation and management complexity, the RAM consumption, and the price.
This one is worth a read too.

Labels: Citrix, VDI, VMware

Just before the launch of XenDesktop 4.0, Citrix released a 42-pages reference architecture on how to build a VDI environment for 10,000 seats with the following characteristics:

The blueprint specifically applies to the previous version of XenDesktop and discusses the following areas of the project:

• Virtualization Infrastructure: A detailed design on the underlying virtualization infrastructure focusing on hardware, capacity, high-availability and storage.
• Operating System Delivery: A detailed design on the delivery of the base operating system to hosted and streamed desktops with a focus on farm design, capacity, cache and high-availability.
• Application Delivery: Focuses on the integration of the application layer in regards to desktop delivery, specifically applications, integration and application optimization.
• Desktop Delivery: Creates a design for the desktop delivery process, with a focus on capacity, groups and group settings.
• Virtual Desktop: Focuses on defining the components of a desktop image for hosted and streamed desktops. The section looks at virtual desktop specifications, desktop images and storage requirements.
• Access Design: Focuses on how internal and external users receive their resources.
• Business Continuity Design: Focuses on designing a solution that reduces the impact of service faults on users.

Independently on the decision to adopt Citrix technologies, it’s a good starting point that anybody interested in VDI may want to check.

In the past VMware published similar papers, like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - Deployment Considerations and VDI Implementation Best Practices.

Labels: Citrix, Papers, VDI

Yesterday Citrix announced the forthcoming release of XenDesktop 4.0, which will be available November 16.

The Citrix answer to the upcoming VMware View 4.0 (and its software version of Teradici PCoIP protocol) is more aggressive than ever.

First of all, the XenDesktop 4.0 Enterprise and Platinum editions are going to include a full, unrestricted edition of XenApp.
The new strategy at Citrix, called FlexCast, is to make no distinction between a desktop deployed on a virtual machine (what we call today VDI), one on a bare metal machine, or one served by a terminal services farm.
XenDesktop plus XenApp are going to allow remote access to all these desktops or to some of their applications, along with application and OS streaming where applicable.

It wouldn’t be too surprising if, over time, Citrix would decide to completely fade out XenApp as a stand-alone technology and name, to focus just on the XenDesktop brand.

The second thing is that the new HDX adaptive technology (which includes the ICA protocol) has been further improved and includes the following components:

• HDX MediaStream for Flash
  Accelerates multimedia performance sending Flash content in its native compressed format to the user’s device and leveraging the local processing power for playback to provide truly local PC-like performance.
• HDX RealTime
  Enhances real-time communications by enabling support for webcams and improving voice and music audio quality while still consuming minimal bandwidth.
• HDX Plug-n-Play
  Enhances support for specialized keyboards (such as the Bloomberg keyboard) and dictation devices like the Philips Speechmike; Also provides users with flexibility to customize their multi-monitor configurations with special screen arrangements (such as U, L, T, reverse L and inverse T shapes) and different sizes, resolutions and orientations.
• HDX 3D
  Extends desktop virtualization to advanced users of CAD/CAM and engineering applications, even over WAN connections. HDX 3D enables organizations to source talent on a global basis, rapidly provision those workers with high powered desktops and professional 3D applications, yet maintain centralized control over intellectual property.
• HDX IntelliCache
  Optimizes performance and network utilization for multiple users by caching bandwidth intensive data and graphics throughout the infrastructure and transparently delivering them as needed from the most efficient location.

Citrix also changed the licensing model of XenDesktop, moving from a concurrent user model to a named user model, as Brian Madden details in his coverage.
Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst at Burton Group, has additional insights about this topic that are really worth a check.

Last but not least, XenDesktop 4.0 ships with both XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V (and continues to support VMware ESX).
Which is like saying that to Citrix it’s completely irrelevant now which hypervisor you use. They just want the premium profit coming from the renewed global effort to centralize the employees workstations.

And to be absolutely sure that XenDesktop arrives in the enterprise customers’ hands, XenDesktop 4.0 is going to be available free of charge to the ones that subscribed the software assurance. Even if it now packs more features than previous versions.
All the others, with a special focus on the XenApp customers which represent the core business of Citrix, the company is offering a remarkable trade-up program to convert them into XenDesktop customers.

Update: The XenDesktop 4.0 licensing change (and its pricing policy) didn’t encounter the favor of customers and prospects.
Citrix reacted quickly to try to recover the positive mood around the product features, and promised to “actively investigating appropriate licensing programs for XenDesktop 4 to address [the use cases where the per-named-user licensing doesn’t work]”.

Citrix has four big challenges:

• How move its core audience from presentation virtualization (XenApp) to hardware virtualization+application virtualization+presentation virtualization (XenDesktop)
• How to attract a new class of customers, that are more interested in hardware virtualization than presentation virtualization
• How to build a brand awareness (which implies trust) that can rival with VMware in the hardware virtualization market VMware leads
• How to justify the jump to and create confidence in desktop virtualization

As Brian Madden already said in his article, the reactions that this licensing change provoked don’t seem to help Citrix in solving any of the four above.

Labels: Citrix, VDI

In February VMware launched an open source version of its View client, released under the LGPL 2.1 version.

virtualization.info already wrote that with this move the company could conquer a large number of thin client providers, which may prefer to adopt and customize View Open Client rather than developing their own connectors.
But it is also possible that VMware may have decided to go open source primarily to accelerate the development of the product and reduce any real or perceived gap with the competition (read Citrix).

In any case, now that View 4.0 is in private beta and finally introduces the much awaited software version of PCoIP, VMware has all the interest to ask the help of the open source community and attract the attention on the new build.

View Open Client 4.0 beta 1 introduces the support for SSL tunneling, two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID and a Command Line Interface (CLI).

Like for the previous release anyway there’s no support for:

• USB redirection
• Multiple desktop sessions
• Multimedia redirection

This client supports View 3.0, 3.1 and the old Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) product, versions 2.0 and 2.1.

Labels: VDI, VMware

As virtualization.info reported multiple times, VMware recently decided to appoint a second CTO to focus exclusively on desktop virtualization.
His business unit should include:

• the VDI connection broker View (acquired from Propero in 2007)
• the technologies OEM’ed from ThinPrint in 2007 (for remote printing), Wyse Technology in 2008 (for RDP acceleration) and RTO Software in 2009 (for persona management)
• the application virtualization platform ThinApp (acquired from Thinstall in 2008)
• the upcoming high-performance remote desktop protocol PCoIP (co-developed with Teradici since 2008)
• the upcoming hypervisor for embedded devices Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP, acquired from Trango in 2008)
• the upcoming client hypervisor Client Virtualization Platform (CVP, which will probably include the technologies acquired from Tungsten Graphics in 2008)

The mission to glue together such amazing amount of technologies, coming from completely different companies for culture and development style, is now in the hands of Scott Davis, who spent more than two years at VMware as Chief Data Center Architect and was, before that, the President and CTO at Virtual Iron.

In the last few weeks Brian Madden, and others, questioned the VMware capability to understand and be relevant in the desktop virtualization space.

Davis answers (ah! the beauty of this blog-centric era) on his new corporate blog:

…VMware’s vision for client or desktop computing is to use virtualization technologies to encapsulate and isolate all the aspects of the desktop. Make each aspect independently manageable, duplicate-able, recreate-able.  Employee-Owned IT? Separate into different virtual machines. Lost, broken or obsolete device? Throw it away, the VM is preserved in the data center and can be redeployed at will. 

I want the freedom that comes with complete separation between my physical devices and all my software. I want device independence; my applications, my data, my personality dynamically composited and encapsulated executing on the optimal device(s) for my  current time and location.  That may mean collocating layers on the same device or distributing across multiple systems. I want isolation; my personal and professional applications, run-time and data isolated and encapsulated, accessible via the internet, mobile devices, thin and thick clients. With client virtualization I want the display, the computes and the storage intelligently and automatically placed – sometimes its’ better to execute the workload in the data center and virtualize the graphics to a client. Other times, I want to take the whole workload with me and run it on a laptop. Or something in between. And why stop there? We’re also doing best of breed virtualization for isolation and encapsulation between all relevant boundaries – that’s why we have ThinApp for application virtualization and continue to invest in advancing that technology. And why we announced at VMworld our relationship with RTO to make use of their profile caching and replication technology in our solutions. And why we partner with Teradici to jointly bring solutions to market based on the best in class remote graphics protocol designed explicitly for virtualized desktops.  And there’s a lot more coming!…

The VMware marketing now calls this User-Centric Computing.

How to get there? First of all by easing the pain of enterprises that have to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7:

And with the Windows 7 refresh looming, this is the ideal time to make the break to virtualized clients. Rapid provisioning, desktop style. Replacing obsolete or lost devices. Painlessly. Upgrading any individual component part, be it hardware or software, without down time or outage. Reduced Complexity. Desktops have gotten burdened with greater and greater complexity, as anyone trying to figure out why their Windows system runs slower and slower will attest. Hey, I’ve built operating systems software and even I get stuck!

Are you satisfied Brian?

Labels: VDI, VMware

Last week VMware released a bunch of updates for several products in its portfolio. Each build is primarily for bug fixing but View Manager 3.1.2 also introduces a new feature:

Labels: Disaster Recovery, Lifecycle Management, Releases, VDI, VMware

Just a couple of days ago virtualization.info wrote about the upcoming launch of Smart Business Desktop, the IBM Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) cloud computing infrastructure powered by VMware, Citrix, Wyse Technology and Desktone products.

We can’t wait October to try what IBM claimed to be an industry first, even if we just spotted a company that seems to have a DaaS offering well before the Big Blue: tuCloud.

The startup promises to deliver on-demand Windows Vista or Windows 7 (with Aero) hosted desktops with up to 4GB RAM within 24 hours maximum (so it’s not in real-time through a self-service provisioning portal as we expect the IBM DaaS to work).

tuCloud offers pay-per-use and pre-pay pricing models, starting at $120 (or 100 Euros) for the first desktop (1GB RAM) plus $65 (or 50 Euros) for additional ones.
A customer can ask up to 100 virtual desktops and, paying an extra, it can have its environment preconfigured with popular commercial products.

There’s even an option to have offshore virtual desktops, where the customers access the cloud through a SSL channel, save everything in a ciphered online storage, surf the web through a transparent proxy, don’t live any trace in the system logs, and have their IP scrubbed from outbound communications.
Of course tuClouds accepts anonymous payments for this service and, granted, they are going to have a lot of problems with it.

The company website doesn’t reveal which virtualization platform serves the virtual desktops states that it supports Microsoft RDP and that power users can have PCoIP, the protocol that Teradici is co-developing with VMware.
Now, because the software-only version of PCoIP is not ready yet, it’s easy to guess that tuCloud is only supporting PCoIP if the customer can have the proper hardware on its client.
A closer look at the footnotes in fact seems to imply that Windows 7 virtual desktops with Aero are only possible when connecting with PCoIP.

tuCloud supports thin clients from Cranberry, HP, Thinspace and Wyse Technology. It seems that the company can deliver any of these at the customers site.

Who’s behind tuCloud?
The company, which seems to be based in UK, is managed by the CEO Guise Bule.
The Bule’s profile on LinkedIn reveals that tuCloud exists at least since January 2006, even if the website was registered only in February 2008.
No other information seem available about the company or the management team.

How tuCloud can offer this DaaS service?
Exactly like for IBM and anyone else will ever provide a DaaS offering, the first question is: how the company is dealing with the licensing issues of the guest operating systems and the applications installed inside the virtual desktops?

Microsoft has a special license for this called Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD) which allows Software Assurance (SA) and non-SA customers to remotely access a Windows client operating system deployed on a VDI environment.
The problem is that this license is per-device and it’s a yearly subscription. So if a DaaS customer accessed his virtual desktop from his device only for 1 month, the cloud provider still has to pay the entire year subscription for him. It cannot simply transfer the remaining 11 months on another customer because the device is different.

And what about the other ISVs licensing terms that should be considered when DaaS customers install, for example, Adobe PhotoShop?

It is very hard to be the first. We’ll see the company will address the questions.

Labels: Teradici, tuCloud, VDI

After a couple of months of beta, Quest released the second minor update for its multi-platform connection broker vWorkspace 6.0.

The new build introduces several enhancements in multi-monitor, USB and graphic support, and a couple of new features:

• the integration with NetApp FlexClone technology (only for VMware VDI environments)
• the integration of vWorkspace Web Access portal with Microsoft SharePoint (experimental)

Labels: Provision Networks, Quest, Releases, VDI

Despite its current size Liquidware Labs, the new company of David Bieneman, founder and former CEO of Vizioncore (acquired by Quest in January 2008), is demonstrating to be extremely aggressive.

The startup acquired VMSight in May, just before its public launch, and then opened a community portal at VDI.com (which is a notable investment considering the length and the relevance of the domain name) which collected over 1,000 subscribers in just a few weeks.

Now Liquidware Labs proceeds with a second acquisition: Entrigue Systems.

Entrigue is small US company founded in 2000 which offers a product called Script Start.
Script Start is able to create, provision and remotely manage the Windows user profiles (what the industry is now calling persona).
It also does other things like software/hardware inventory, but most of all it supports presentation virtualization environments like Citrix XenApp, VDI environments like VMware View and even enterprise desktop virtualization wrappers like Microsoft MED-V.

Entrigue used to offer an open source version of Script Start which lacks of some enterprise features. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that Liquidware Labs saved this edition during the acquisition.

This move is extremely interesting. The technology acquired from VMsight puts Liquidware Labs in the area of VDI optimization, not persona management. So why the company needs a product like Script Start?
It is entirely possible that Liquidware Labs is working to build some sort of automation to glue together the two things: the data collected by Stratusphere about the user activity in VDI environments could be analyzed to recognize the root cause of the bottlenecks and, according to that, the user profile could be optimized by ProfileUnity to improve the experience.

If so expect Liquidware Labs to acquire a company in the scripting/automation space soon, or at least announce a new product suite in the coming months.

Labels: Acquisitions, Entrigue Systems, LiquidWare Labs, VDI

Virtual Computer, the company founded by the father of Virtual Iron (acquired by Oracle in May) continues to evolve its management solution NxTop Center heavily using multiple forms of virtualization.

The company already has a Xen-based client hypervisor and a fairly complex web-based console which uses virtual machines,  snapshots and clones to publish the right system environment to the right user with the right customization (what the industry is calling persona now).

Now Virtual Computer also simplified the management of the application layer thanks to a technology partnership with XenoCode, the application virtualization company that already has an OEM deal with Novell.

Compared to the Novell agreement, Virtual Computer is not OEM’ing the XenoCode Virtual Application Studio.
It is just supporting the applications virtualized with the XenoCode technology out-of-the-box inside its NxTop virtual machines.

It is not a revolution but this way Virtual Computer is silently building an end-to-end VDI stack that one day could rival with the upcoming ones from Citrix and VMware.

Labels: Alliances, Platform Management, VDI, Virtual Computer, XenoCode

In mid-July virtualization.info unveiled that VMware was looking for a second CTO, who could take care of a desktop virtualization business unit that includes View, ThinApp, the Client Virtualization Platform (CVP), the new Virtual Profiles product OEM’ed from RTO Software, and more.

To cover this role VMware didn’t hire an external resource but promoted its Chief Data Center Architect, Scott Davis, co-founder and former President and CTO at Virtual Iron (acquired by Oracle in May).

Davis is in VMware since April 2007, but VMware formally presented him as CTO only at VMworld 2009.
This move should unload the growing responsibility of Steve Herrod, who leads the VMware technical effort since December 2001.

Labels: Leadership, VDI, VMware

In our VMworld 2009 live coverage of the Day 2 keynote, we briefly mentioned that VMware has now an OEM agreement with RTO Software to use their Virtual Profiles products inside View.

The OEM agreement allows RTO Software to sell Virtual Profiles independently and update the product’s code base.
The interesting part anyway is that RTO Software has a similar deal with another major vendor that is become increasingly active in the desktop virtualization space, Symantec, even if their version of Virtual Profiles is not out yet.

Virtual Profiles is a mandatory piece to manage the so-called persona (the user data and customization of the applications and the system environment) in a virtual desktop infrastructure.
This agreement will help VMware to better compete against Citrix, Symantec and the other vendors that are developing end-to-end VDI solutions.

On top of that the persona management is a building block of the VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) effort as much as the mobile hypervisor acquired from Trango in November 2008.

Labels: Alliances, RTO Software, VDI, VMware

More than one year ago IBM signed a partnership with the startup Desktone to implement a 1,400 seats VDI architecture powered by their technology at the Pike County Schools.

That move cleared the IBM plan to become a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) cloud provider which became a reality at the end of last month.

Two weeks ago in fact IBM announced the upcoming availability of its new Smart Business Desktop, a IaaS architecture powered by VMware, Citrix, Desktone and Wyse products.

The company website doesn’t clarify which vendors will provide which components but it’s pretty easy to guess (Citrix helped with a specific announcement): VMware will provide the hypervisor (ESX) and management layer (vCenter), Citrix will provide the connection broker (XenDesktop) and remote desktop protocol (HDX), Wyse will provide the thin clients and Desktone of course will glue the whole thing with its self-service portal for customers and policy manager for the cloud provider.

IBM plans to launch the Smart Business Desktop offering in October 2009 with a subscription model.

For the very first time a hardware virtualization architecture will be an alternative to the web-based architectures that Google represents so well. Hopefully virtualization.info will be able to access the IBM cloud and report about it after some extended use.

Labels: Citrix, Desktone, IBM, VDI, VMware, Wyse Technology